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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (230854)	9/3/2013 11:32:02 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542148

I think that that is a really abstract way of looking at it. Sure, some people on welfare will be debilitated by it, just as some people who inherit money will be debilitated by that. Plenty of others won't be, though, and plenty of them use the aid it gives in constructive rather than destructive ways. Others just game the system, take what it gives and go into the underground economy--they don't get debilitated by it but also continue to use it even when it isn't needed. I am quiet sure that all of those ways of using welfare exist. I don't have a clue how to tell how much of each is done though.

To: neolib who wrote (230854)	9/3/2013 11:32:04 AM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542148

One of the problems with the welfare system is the huge disincentive to earn additional income as a result of the tax structure. The very poor receive substantial benefits only when they stay very poor. The tax and benefit systems work together so that in many cases the effective (when loss of benefits is considered) marginal tax rate on additional income is more than 100%. If raising the marginal tax rates on high income earners to 50% is a disincentive, taxing the working poor at over 100% probably doesn't make much sense.

To: neolib who wrote (230854)	9/3/2013 12:21:30 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542148

The thing I find interesting is that in social science, they find links in interpersonal relationships like codependency, but try to deny that anything like dependency could arise due to welfare. There is a literature, largely in social psychology, on codependency. I don't know it. But it does exist. And, so far as I know, it's not connected to the literature on poverty, welfare, opportunity, and so on. In that latter literature, there was, last time I read it with any degree of care, lots of different views, lots of different research. I'm, in no way, positioning myself as speaking for the substantive conclusions of that literature; only for proper methodology. I doubt anyone argues that there is no dependency from welfare. I suspect there are all sorts of relationships to it among those using it. But the general policy argument you seem to be making here is that ending welfare would be better for those who receive it. That's the wrong headed policy argument. My own view on this score is that we need to provide support for folk who are poor but pay far more attention than we have to implementing policies that help the children of the poor escape it and jobs for their parents. That's the point of my notions about education. Are you arguing that the best way to assist the poor on welfare is to end it? From what I can observe the entire welfare system from top to bottom is one chain of dependency. I see that's your opinion. And mine is that it's much more complicated than that. But, more importantly, the real question to me is how to help the children escape it. I don't see ending welfare as helping; only making it worse. Improving education is the way. And, obviously, improving access to jobs for parents.

To: neolib who wrote (230854)	9/3/2013 3:16:10 PM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Respond to of 542148

I think you assume too much there. Certainly there is anecdotal evidence for support of some of the statement (newspaper articles that detail children of welfare Moms becoming welfare Moms themselves--at least before the welfare reform of 1996), but people get off of welfare now also--partially because of the requirement of work imposed. I just think more data is needed on the subject--particularily as to the fate of kids raised by welfare parents or parent. My guess is the picture revealed would be one of a complex mosaic of many colors and patterns..